The dungeon journal isn't a very effective method of communicating what to do in these fights. Even Blizzard has admitted as much. For a lot of fights is practically useless. Same scenario they run into with tooltips. There's no sweet spot because the amount of information you need and that is going on is far too much for general players to be able to understand.

There's definitely a way to design it so that it is more effective at communicating things you need to know. A good example is removing the numbers from the explanation of abilities. Maybe have the numbers present on a tooltip when highlighting over the spell, but otherwise keep the explanation free of damage amounts.

Some people may disagree with this, but it's a fairly common sense thing to observe. If you look at the journal entries for any given encounter, then read anyone's LFR Chat explanation of a fight, one is vastly easier to comprehend. To simplify this even more, the difference between saying:

-Fire of Fire Doom - Once Highlord Firebutt reaches 20 stacks of Lolumadbro, causes invisible rocket demons to bombard fire gypsies around the room in a 20 yd radius. After 3 seconds the gypsies explode dealing 247568 damage to players within 5 yards of the point of impact. This effect also causes the cauterized effect, which reduces damage taken by 50% for 20 seconds.

-AND-

-When you see a red circle on the ground, don't be anywhere near it. Only the tanks should be in red circles.

I know what you mean, but I use the dungeon journal as an example because I've seen a lot of people complain that having to go to wowhead/youtube and watch videos on fights takes too long. Reading the journal doesn't take any time and it's in the game already. At least if they've read up on the main abilities they know not to hit him in defensive mode, for example. For the first wing of SoO they actually had overviews of each fight in the journal, which was really nice.

Originally Posted by Ronduwil

So you're telling me that you expect to wait five minutes before every new pull in LFR so that all the people doing the fight for the first time can read all the boss abilities, right? At four bosses per wing that's a minimum of 20 minutes you're adding to every run so that all the new people (and with 25 random people there will always be one or two of those) can catch up. Oh, and if there's a wipe and some new players zone in you're spending yet another 5 minutes for them. Now we're adding another 5 minutes per wipe. That 5 or 6 times you wiped on the shamans? Tack 25-30 minutes of you waiting for newcomers to read on to that and tell me how fun that experience would have been. The expectations that everyone read up on and know the fights is realistic for an organized group because you can pre-screen for people who have done that ahead of time. It's not realistic in a group of 25 players, and as I just pointed out, it would take to much time to enforce. About the only way you can make this work is if you force LFR to give everyone a pre-test on each fight before allowing them to queue for the first time. That may not be such a bad idea, but it's certainly not in the game right now.

So it's impossible to read the fights before you queue up or while you're waiting? You have to do it after you get in?

I know what you mean, but I use the dungeon journal as an example because I've seen a lot of people complain that having to go to wowhead/youtube and watch videos on fights takes too long. Reading the journal doesn't take any time and it's in the game already. At least if they've read up on the main abilities they know not to hit him in defensive mode, for example. For the first wing of SoO they actually had overviews of each fight in the journal, which was really nice.

Oh certainly. It's just that the format is going to be so daunting to a large portion of people that they would rather keep failing or wait for someone to lay it out bare bones for them. We all have different needs and have different logic languages. A large portion of people who do LFR (the ones who have never really raided before) are not attuned to being able to comprehend instruction that way.

And to be honest, even people who have raided a long time depended on one person who was good at communicating strats otherwise they were helpless. I agree they should probably try to read it, but to a non raider just glancing at it is going to confuse them. I want to be angry that we have to hold people's hands on even how to use the dungeon journal, but it's just reality and I can't be mad at people just because they can't do what I can.

It seems that they make LFR easier every patch, and yet they have to keep nerfing it. I know it's not raiding school anymore, but... Well, I reckon the target audience will be happy. The box that can't be closed when opened.

The entry for SoO LFR should have been 502. No reason why they shouldn't require people to have at least half-assedly farmed ToT once for rep and then got some Valor gear that all now only requires friendly.

Oh certainly. It's just that the format is going to be so daunting to a large portion of people that they would rather keep failing or wait for someone to lay it out bare bones for them. We all have different needs and have different logic languages. A large portion of people who do LFR (the ones who have never really raided before) are not attuned to being able to comprehend instruction that way.

And to be honest, even people who have raided a long time depended on one person who was good at communicating strats otherwise they were helpless. I agree they should probably try to read it, but to a non raider just glancing at it is going to confuse them. I want to be angry that we have to hold people's hands on even how to use the dungeon journal, but it's just reality and I can't be mad at people just because they can't do what I can.

Yeah I see what you mean. If I were in their shoes I probably wouldn't even use it, I would just go to wowhead and read through the strategies in the comments or go to youtube. In particular for the tanks it probably doesn't help much.

I'm just sad that LFR keeps turning into this afk-fest just because people can't pay attention for fights that are easy to begin with, or God forbid ask for help.

It's a giant red circle with extremely clear and noticeable graphics that you have like 30 seconds to move out of. That's just another step in the direction of "stand in whatever you want and the 3-4 healers that aren't afk/dps spec will just heal you through it".

IMO instead of nerfing LFR they should make sure people have an incentive to learn:-Make PG silver a requirement (hint: it's extremely easy)
-Only characters that have passed the character audit can join (everything gemmed/enchanted, even with cheap gems/enchants)-Allow reports for bad play/trolling/afk that actually have a meaningful impact. You were reported by 50 people for afk last week? Too bad, you get a week long ban from all random matchmaking tools. Next time it will be more.
-If you want to go extreme limit loot to only decent performers. You did less than 2% of the groups damage on that boss or the adds that needed to die? Just pressing a button to join LFR should not qualify you for loot just because you are a special snowflake (it could be disabled/tweaked for fights with very specific mechanics like norushen or tanks/healers of course)

A game where you are guaranteed to win is not a game.

People think its funny to CR people into falling ask, a dps may be able to wait before accepting, but a tank cant wait. If its 1 second left of falling ask, that tank will die.
PG is also extremely boring, making it through broze without dying from boredom is a challenge
Too bad people report for fun

Originally Posted by Aquamonkey

Just because Mannoroth and Archimonde are involved doesn't mean it's Legion. They could just be on vacation, demolishing Draenor to build their new summer home.

You cannot trust, nor take seriously, an adult male without facial hair.Boys have no facial hair and boys are not men.
╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻

So it's impossible to read the fights before you queue up or while you're waiting? You have to do it after you get in?

It's impossible to expect that everyone will have done this before queueing. You and I can read up on all the fights we want before queueing together, but there are still 23 others that we have no control over. That's the environment LFR players are expected to succeed in. I'll take this a step further and argue that traditionally gamers have never been expected to "research" content prior to encountering it. In fact, many would convincingly argue that doing so ruins the experience. What you could call "reading up on the fight" could accurately be characterized as "reading spoilers." When you're reading a book, for instance, you're not forced to recite the main character's dialogue in the middle of chapter one in order to access page 2, but somehow that's pretty much what we're expecting in raids. Half the fun of a fight used to be encountering new mechanics and coming up with your own ways to counter them. Unfortunately players are impatient so instead of taking the time to figure these out they cheat and look up others' strategies online. Blizzard has adapted to this by shifting the challenge away from figuring out the counter-strategies and into properly executing the counter-strategies. That's why people who laughably talk about just needing to "not stand in the fire" in order to raid successfully are dating themselves.

These days you need to stand in some of the fire and avoid other fire, but you also need to do so while targeting add X while ignoring add Y, and on top of that you have to interrupt add Z so have your focus/macro combo ready for that. By the way, you can't just blindly debuff everyone these days, and not just because they put massive cooldowns on dispelling skills. There are some debuffs that you need to dispel, but you have to wait for the right moment to dispel them or you'll damage everyone in a 10 yard radius. There are other debuffs you ignore unless they hit three stacks because if you dispel every single one of them you'll eventually blow the super special one-fight-only debuff mechanic on yourself and will start randomly attacking your raid members. Other fights you want to let the yellow "debuff" expire because then it turns into a giant buff but you want to dispel the red debuff ASAP because it wipes the raid. We went through phases of standing around for half the fight so that you would have your mana when it really counted to going balls-to-the-wall all fight long but these days we're going balls-to-the-wall and then blowing extra cooldowns at crucial phases so that we can heal through the two or three unavoidable make-everyone-feel-the-pain mechanics.

As for tanking, just about every fight features tank swapping mechanics with stacking debuffs thrown in for good measure. On top of that they need to either turn the boss away from everyone to avoid wiping the raid or turn the boss toward the stacked group so that everyone can share in the pain and avoid one-shotting the tank. I long for the days of tank-and-spank-and-stay-out-of-the-fire. If only raids were that simple...

It seems that they make LFR easier every patch, and yet they have to keep nerfing it. I know it's not raiding school anymore, but... Well, I reckon the target audience will be happy. The box that can't be closed when opened.

Easier every patch?
I feel its getting harder every patch, how many spells could oneshot you in LFR before ToT?

Originally Posted by Aquamonkey

Just because Mannoroth and Archimonde are involved doesn't mean it's Legion. They could just be on vacation, demolishing Draenor to build their new summer home.

You cannot trust, nor take seriously, an adult male without facial hair.Boys have no facial hair and boys are not men.
╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻

You didn't try it this patch, did you? Also, I think you have it backwards. DS was the easiest LFR there ever was. One-shotted every single boss the very first night it dropped. The only fights I ever wiped on in DS were spine and madness, and I never experienced more than three or four wipes even in those.

Sick of people lumping all casuals with the same attitude. Not all "casuals" are happy to see content nerfed.
As a busy mum, i'm lucky if I get 40 minutes uninterrupted, let alone between 1-2 hrs to clear a wing in flex. Time IS an issue for me.
Theres so much more to the game than just raiding (speaking as an ex-heroic25 raider too) so I find it incredibly narrow minded of you to question peoples motives for playing based on available time

100% understandable, I wasn't meaning as a whole (maybe I didn't make it clear). I'm talking more about in general for players who think it's an excuse to use not having enough time to raid because of work/school/uni. Practically everyone in my 25man raiding group works a full time job and still manages to free up 3hours 3 times a week to have some fun downing HC bosses. It's the kind of people who complain about not having enough time, then you WoWprogress them & they have like 8 level 90's decked out in full LFR gear.

then you WoWprogress them & they have like 8 level 90's decked out in full LFR gear.

Not to mention the fact that LFR actually is a lot more stressful and time consuming than a 3 hour raid with your guild. Wiping for some times 4+ hours on only half of TOT because of a streak of horrible tanks was not only time consuming but mentally exhausting. Not only that, but these same players are typically massive fans of pet battling. Pet battling takes A LOT of time, you have to be dedicated to spending a lot of time in it in order to have good pets and be able to do stuff like complete the celestial tournament.

Personally the majority of these people who say "i don't have time to raid" really just mean "i want to one shot all bosses and never face a challenge" Sure, there are some people who are time locked most evenings or some times even more, but to those people i will just say "too bad." I do not personally have the patience to go and learn how to play the guitar, that shouldn't mean it should be made infinitely easier just for me. I don't have the time that i want to sacrifice to be able to become a top 25 guild raider, those guilds shouldnt all suddenly reduce their hours and rules just for me.

Quite a ridiculous suggestion for anyone to want everything changed just for them.